Toxicity
by Blue Quartz
Summary: Crossover: Sailor MoonFinal Fantasy VII. AU. What if there was never a Moon Kingdom? What if the ones who have been chosen to defend a world destory it? And how can one save a dying world when you can't even fight off your own demons?


Toxicity  
  
Notes: Instead of sitting in front of computer and dutifully typing the updates to her fan fics...like she promised, Blue-chan is walking around cyberspace with a large net in her hand and a big juicy carrot dangling from a stick held in her other hand.  
  
"Here plot bunnies, plot bunnies. Here plot bunnies, come get the nice carrot and don't worry about the net."  
  
As you can guess no plot bunny is stupid enough to come near her so she just wanders cyberspace...waiting and walking...looking for the evil that unleashed and even greater evil on her...a new fic idea! OMG the horror the sheer utter horror!  
  
Coughs, but seriously folks I really need to break this habit of starting up new fics when I still have over half a dozen more to complete but this idea just wouldn't leave me alone.  
  
I don't own Sailor Moon or Final Fantasy VII, although I really wouldn't mind owning a few male characters from either...laugh insanely.  
  
Quickly sobers up: Believe it or not this fic is suppose to be serious so just dismiss my mindless and giggly ramble...is giggly even a word...it must be because Word spell checker hasn't highlighted it.  
  
Chapter One  
  
A Notch in the Wall  
  
A pale hand raises a dagger to the metal, the tip resting a hair above the surface of the wall. A sharp squeal sounded as the sharpened metal chaffed against the solid resistance. A single mark slowly forming from the cleaving of two different metals. Unmoving, emotionless blue eyes stared at the mark.  
  
Another day  
  
Another mark  
  
Out of 360  
  
One  
  
Times five  
  
Notch  
  
Five years seemed like an eternity when all you had to keep up with the days were dates and marks etched into a once stainless steel wall. When your world revolved around the next examination and the highlight of your day was the next meal, life seemed more than pointless...it was painful.  
  
No one especially a child, should have to live that way. But it was debatable whether or not she was a child, outwardly she was sixteen, a child growing into an adult but inside her blue eyes spoke of a broken maturity that only a stiff will for survival and determination to remain sane could bring to otherwise doe like eyes.  
  
She had a past, a home, a family, a name; but years behind walls of steel, months of hypodermic needles filled with only Kami knew what, weeks of silence and loneliness had washed away the days of when life was kinder, when a smile didn't mean a lie was going to escape the same lips grinning. Now she was just a number: Specimen 3027, it was tattooed on her left hand, it glared at her from the metal collar fitted around her neck so that she couldn't use her powers to escape. Mercury. It was horridly ironic how the metal of the same name as her powers could seal her. A name, a power, and an intimate object could betray her just like her "family" had.  
  
Her birth family had died when she was four so she was taken into the care of her mother's brother. His family was kind at first until unexplainable...accidents began happening.  
  
'The water has frozen in the pipes again. What?! But how is that possible? It is a hundred and ten degrees outside for goodness sake!'  
  
Every and anything liquid that passed through her hands became ice and only she could unfreeze the liquid, not fire, not heat only her hands could cause the water to turn back into liquid. She didn't do such things on purpose...they just happened.  
  
Accidents.  
  
But her uncle and his family didn't see it that way.  
  
'She's doing on purpose the little witch!'  
  
Even now she winced at the tone her aunt had screamed after she had caused a water pipe to burst there by flooding the entire house.  
  
'Honey it is not her fault.'  
  
'She's dangerous I tell you! We should have her locked up in an institution or something!'  
  
'But dear she is my sister's child...'  
  
'Your sister was a freak of nature to begin with and now just look at this monstrosity she has left us with. Look at her sitting there like a stupid cow, pretending that she doesn't know what we are talking about.'  
  
The girl shook her head. She wasn't stupid. She was just as confused about her "gift" as her aunt and uncle were. But her aunt didn't see things that way.  
  
'Where are we going uncle?'  
  
'Uh don't worry about that...you'll like it...there will be many people like you there...'  
  
He had neglected to mention that this place she would "like" was Shinra Labs.  
  
From day one there was poking, prodding, and injections. If there were other specimens she never saw them, all she saw were doctors but thankfully she had yet to receive a visit from Hojo. Whatever this man had done, or was doing, he struck fear into the hearts of the staff and many of the doctors were afraid to even approach their colleague.  
  
'I wanted to be a doctor once,' the girl mused at this thought as if it was a sudden revelation. She shuttered, hopefully she didn't want to be anything like these doctors. They scared her; a lot of things scared her actually. She was also sick a lot, she suspected that it had something to do with all of the injections they were giving her; but she had never been close to death. She had a mild allergy to an injection once but that was about the worst of it.  
  
The testing had become more intense now. More examinations were called for since her last year, she no longer knew her birthday; more injections, they made her arms feel very stiff and sore and weak sometimes to the point of sickness but the feeling always passed in a short amount of time.  
  
Her eyes felt very heavy. She knew not the hours of the day anymore than she knew the days; it could have been mid morning for all she cared for when her body demanded sleep she slept, there was nothing better to do anyway.  
  
Slowly she drifted off into sleep only to be violently shaken awake.  
  
She bit back a groan of protest, knowing from experience that if one was not spoken to one must remain silent at all times. Her ocean eyes opened and began to focus on her room.  
  
Glancing up she saw the one whom had disturbed her rest; she breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out to be Dr. Genius, if any of the doctors were to be considered "nice" she would be a likely candidate. Dr. Genius was the only female doctor on the team of five that studied "her". The girl was beginning to grow uncomfortable with the male doctors, they always seemed to touch her in the wrong places and make her feel like she was a lab rat, a mere animal to be handled and berated with tests. But very much unlike a lab rat she felt degraded from them touching her. Dr. Garret noticed how the girl would try to avoid the prodding of the other doctors and had taken it upon herself to do the more personal examinations.  
  
Instead of the cool professional façade the stern woman with graying blond hair normally showed there was anxiousness and profound fear.  
  
'You need to get up Ami,"  
  
The girl frowned, who was this Ami person? She stared at the woman as if to say sorry-but-you-must-have-mistaken-me-for-someone-else.  
  
The elder woman gave the girl's arm a sharp tug.  
  
A shocked squeaked escaped her mouth, she couldn't help it, her arm was very tender after the last round of shots and the less than gentle pull caused it to ache all over again.  
  
The woman looked at her in an uncharacteristic display of sympathy, "I am sorry, but you have to get up and get out of here before Hojo comes with..." the woman broke off with a gasp as the wall behind the girl's bed lifted to reveal a two way window of unbreakable glass.  
  
Standing on the other side of the glass was a short man dressed in a lab coat, dark short hair seemed to be plastered to his head like a badly mad wig. A thick pair of glasses resting just above a hawk like nose, the glass framed a pair of watery brown eyes that stared at her like she was, what else, a lab rat. The girl frowned, she didn't like the look of him, he looked stupid yet kind of dangerous in an unstable way. Since he was openly studying her she decided to show him the same curtsey by gazing right back at him with a critical eye; so this was Hojo, now she was defiantly glad that whatever they lab team was doing to her he was not apart of.  
  
The man blinked when he realized that she was analyzing him as well, he laughed and turned to the other presence staring through the window. She couldn't see the other person though since they were standing in the shadows but she could see dark yet glowing green eyes, she shuttered, whomever that was she felt that this person should be feared.  
  
Hojo one might want to be cautious about but the one whom belonged to the glowing green eyes should be avoided at all costs, unfortunately for her Hojo was planning just the opposite.  
  
"Look at her," Hojo whispered almost in wonderment at the small blue haired girl. "Team 7R has been working on her for ages but they still have yet to figure out whether she is really an Ancient, a distant descendant of an Ancient, or just a psychic that can manipulate ice and water." Hojo muttered as he scribbled something down on the piece of paper attached to his clipboard. "They have run several tests for the last five or so years but her DNA changes so rapidly that they can never get consistent results, almost as if her body doesn't want us to find out the true answer."  
  
He filled the entire page with various notes on the girl child's appearance and behavior, "Whatever she is I for one have to admit that she is a fascinating specimen to observe. Of course I haven't gotten approval from the Board to take her on as an experiment but just think of all of the possibilities."  
  
He thoughtfully tapped the tip of his pen against his square chin before he turned his head to face the shadow, "What do you think?"  
  
"...You brought me here just to look at some girl?" a low voice growled.  
  
"Ah not just any girl Sephiroth, this girl," Hojo said tapping his pen against the glass pointing at the girl, "just might be the closest thing to a true Ancient that we have. She has great potential for magic, stronger than what those stupid little spheres can give us. The only thing those tests did gather from her blood and DNA is that she is literally made up of energy that can only manifest itself in water and ice but still has possibilities."  
  
"She looks more like a mouse than a human," the legendary SOILDER replied in an impassive tone.  
  
Even if the girl couldn't hear what they were saying she had a feeling that they were talking about her. Five years of being bossed around and bullied, of being condescended and treated like an animal was just too much.  
  
She was an innocent girl by nature but she figured that it couldn't hurt to send the two imposing figures a sincere gesture.  
  
Hojo blinked for a good minute when he saw the tiny girl raise her middle left finger to him then rudely stick her finger upward; when the gesture finally registered into the doctor's mind he was livid. He glared at the girl wanting to reach through the glass and throttle the brat. Behind him the figure allowed a very small, almost nonexistent smirk to cross his lips; so the mouse did have at least a little bit of spirit. But he knew that if the young girl really understood whom she was flicking off she wouldn't have performed such a brass action.  
  
"Why that little..." the "good doctor" snarled, his hand fisting around the pen so tightly that it snapped in two. He silently counted to ten and turned his attention from the girl to his, so far, successful experiment.  
  
"She may not be much to look at now but give her a few years and I am sure that you will be without complaints." Hojo stated crisply.  
  
"What in the hell are you babbling about Hojo?" Sephiroth demanded rather than asked the man.  
  
"Hmm, I am talking about finishing the experiment of course. Since I have yet to successfully recreate another being of your magnificence makes perfect sense that the next step is for you to be paired with a female whom at the very least has some Ancient blood running through her veins. Hopefully offspring produced from such a union will at least hold half of your strength."  
  
"I am not one of your rats Hojo. Even if I agreed to such an arrangement a mousy child would not be my first choice. As it is I don't have time to be involved with your crackpot schemes."  
  
With that the shadowed figure left the room, disappearing from behind the already limited field of vision that the window provided. Soon after Hojo disappeared as well.  
  
The girl snorted, 'Good riddance,' she thought.  
  
Suddenly she felt a cold hand grasp her shoulder, the hand was shaking. "Gods Ami, for a moment I thought they were going to come in and take you."  
  
The girl frowned, what could those two do to her that the female doctor and her colleagues hadn't done to her already?  
  
A hard shutter passed through the older woman as she increased her hold on the child, "We have to get you out of here before Hojo can gets his hands on you."  
  
The girl gulped, she knew that she was forbidden to speak unless spoken to but the question was just burning the tip of her tongue. "What will he do to me?" she whispered then ducked away from the woman's touch, deathly afraid that she was going to be struck for speaking out of turn.  
  
The woman only shook her head, "Terrible things honey. There have been rumors going around that he is looking at the various female specimens, he has already petitioned for several other test subjects from other research groups. Many are saying that he is trying to..."  
  
The woman stopped herself; afraid of saying too much, so instead of completing her first sentence she started a new thread of thought. "We have got to get you out of here."  
  
The girl curled her small fingers into the woman's lab coat, "But if you help me escape you'll get in trouble."  
  
The woman stared down at the girl, she slowly raised a hand to stroke a stray strand of blue hair out of her face; but the girl too used to hostility of such an action jerked away so the woman's hand floated in mid air.  
  
She looked disheartened for a minute, but then a small smile graced her face, "It's alright Ami, I am not going to hurt you."  
  
"I've said too much," the girl whispered but then clasped her hand over her mouth when she realized that she had spoken out of turn again.  
  
"Shhh, it's alright I don't mind if you talk. But for now, please listen to me. I am going to need your complete trust. Can you do that Ami? Can you place your trust in me?"  
  
Slowly, almost reluctantly the girl lowered her hands away from her mouth, "I guess I can," she whispered softly. Her gaze became questioning, "Why do you keep calling me "Ami"?" the girl asked.  
  
The older woman shrugged, "I can't keep calling you test subject such and such and besides "Ami" is your real name. You forgot it didn't you?"  
  
The girl nodded, at this the doctor tiskked, "This is worse than I thought, you are so lucky to have your sanity remain intact so far child. Normally human "lab rats" come in here and stay anywhere from months to years before they began to lose track of time, days, their memories, even their own names and birth dates, then it all goes downhill from there. Oh honey I am sorry I didn't mean to make you cry!"  
  
Tears began spilling from Ami's eyes when she realized that the doctor was describing the slow process of madness that she was experiencing. She could do without her dignity; she never talked much as a child anyway so her voice was no great loss but her mind was a different story.  
  
Her intelligence was what she was as a person; when she attended school she was smarter than her entire class, scoring well above standard in exams; she received so much praise from the teachers and a few older students that she actually felt good about herself. She wanted to be a doctor, a good doctor, one that helped people not the ones that stab people with needles and treated fellow humans like they were less than a ameba.  
  
She wanted to be somebody. She had goals and dreams of a dewy eyes child; but at least those dreams were there.  
  
This hellhole of metal had sucked all of that from her. She couldn't lose her mind; it was all she had left.  
  
She leaned into the open arms of the doctor whom had been her silent, and only, advocate since last year. Her face burned from the stream of tears and her body was wracked by sobs that had been locked up for at least three years when she grew too tired to cry herself to sleep.  
  
"I don't want to stay here," Ami confessed tearfully. "I am scared but I don't want to stay."  
  
The doctor calmly rocked her back and forth like a she would have a fussing newborn, "Don't worry child, we'll get you out of here before that happens. Before Hojo can get his hands on you. Before this day is out we will get you out of here. I promise."  
  
Ami whimpered burring her face into the shoulder of the woman, "I don't care how long it takes. I just want out of here. Please take me away."  
  
A soft but scared hand ran through the girl's soft blue hair; Ami didn't see the tears that had soften the woman's normally serious and stern gray- blue eyes. She had her own horror story to tell about Shinra Labs. Years ago when she was young an foolish she had lost her only child, a daughter, to the hands of experiments. Policy they said, all employees must have their children subjected to tests. That would have been fine if it was only testing.  
  
Her baby fell ill, a severe allergic reaction from the injections that they were giving her...the child soon died long before reaching her first birthday. Even though she blamed Shinra for what they did to her child she had to continue working for them because what other work was there for her to do? She had too much pride to "work" in the streets and secretary, teaching, heck any job for a woman was hard to come by so she had to stay in order to support herself and a now empty household. When she had been assigned to the team working with this girl she had originally steeled her will not to get to attach to the fragile girl since she too might fall under the same fate as her baby girl. After four years the girl still remained alive, barely at times, but still alive.  
  
Then the men of her research team began taking...personal interest in the girl whom was rapidly growing into a woman, so she grudgingly stepped in and took over her examinations to prevent the girl from further embarrassment.  
  
And now Hojo wanted her so that he could hand her over to his "perfect" specimen for a toy. It sicken her how little decency for human life that man had, both of them actually; one was a SOILDER so that was somewhat understandable but the his "father" was a completely different story.  
  
Cradling the young woman in her arms, she felt as if she had been given a second chance at being a mother, even if it was for a brief moment. The girl was right, she was risking a lot to save the girl she had studied for half a decade.  
  
She would lose her job if she was caught but right now the girl's well being seemed more important than anything else.  
  
The girl suddenly lifted her head up, I forgot," she said wiping away her tears, "What is your name?"  
  
The woman smiled, "Serenity, Serenity Garret."  
  
Notes: Sorry to cut things short folks. I hope that you enjoyed this piece of random insanity because I might not continue it. In case you're wondering I have never played the game before, I just watch my brother play it sometimes so I really don't know the storyline all that well so please, please don't be mad at me. I know that some of the characters might be OOC but since I will more than likely not finish this I guess it really doesn't matter. Thanks for reading. Peace ^_^ 


End file.
